Tag false allegations of rape

Why Lying Women Don’t Cry Rape All the Time

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A rhetorical catfight has been waged for years on the Internet between injured men and injured women or people who advocate on behalf of injured women. It’s a logical mare’s nest. Untold men (and women) have been wronged by casually abused and abusive procedures of law whose genesis owes to rabid feminist politicking at the end of the last century. These men (and women) have, again in untold because incalculable numbers, been unjustly deprived of children, home, property, livelihood, security, dignity, and/or liberty, and that fact has largely gone disregarded. A perusal of the quotations in the margin of this blog will satisfy any conscientious reader that this is a fact and not merely an allegation. The laws themselves are bent. Injured men (their predominant victims) have, sensibly or not, accordingly sought to draw attention to lying by women by emphasizing that women will lie even about rape (the specter in the room, incidentally, during any legal proceeding based on an allegation of abuse). There have, of course, been many documented cases of false rape allegations’ being made by women. Feminist advocates deny false accusation of rape “occurs” to any significant degree, ignoring the underlying male plaint, namely, that women lie in heinously vengeful, passive-aggressive, attention-seeking, destructive ways—and contrary to what some apologists for feminine lying would have the public believe, unscrupulous women (and men) don’t lie because they’re crazy, per se. They lie because it’s effective, just as diverting the “conversation” away from lying to lying about rape is effective at denying either one merits consideration.

These are not people.

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

—Marie Shear

Far from suggesting that women are Barbie dolls or marble angels, a proposition that may even have offended its speaker, this quotation, oft brandished by feminists today, promotes the idea that women are people. And people, unlike Barbie dolls or marble angels, lie. They lie about anything it serves them to lie about.

So much then for the myth of the faultless woman—which is one you’re unlikely to find debunked on Jezebel.com.

The question this post considers is that if women are willing to lie to cops and judges (and they are, as are men), why pussyfoot and not just accuse any target of malice of sexual violation? It’s a potent allegation.

Well, it comes with a host of complications is why. In civil court, a false (or possibly real but baseless) claim of fear is all it takes to procure a protective order and turn a person’s life on its head. It can win a perfect stranger the exclusive entitlement to a person’s home and property while possibly landing him or her in jail. Unless a lying plaintiff aims to drive her victim to suicide, falsely alleging rape is overkill and pointlessly invites exposure.

A criminal claim of rape, on the other hand, both figuratively and literally invites strangers’ noses into uncomfortable places. Government wants specifics and evidence. Girlfriends and family members may gently inquire about details.

This is the kind of claim, if false, that requires a great deal of determination to pull off and carries a heavy risk of tattering under scrutiny.

Let’s not deceive ourselves that unscrupulous women are too virtuous to lie about rape. Rather let’s be honest: Lying about rape is demanding and dicey.

That said, it’s really not that tough in civil court, which doesn’t require “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” In civil court, it’s just he-said-she-said. A defendant doesn’t even have to be heard in court for a “default” judgment to be entered against him. And even if he does appear, there’s no guarantee the plaintiff will be required to or that the accused will have the opportunity to cross-examine her, making a mockery of the adversarial process. A judgment in civil court doesn’t represent a finding that a rape was committed, necessarily, but it’s not a denial that a rape was committed, either, and the accusation is what’s preserved.

The injustice is glaring but note that it’s legally no worse than that any other allegation that works can be made and can accomplish the same damaging consequences.

People have to live with this shit. Their families have to live with this shit. Their children have to live with this shit.

This is what men’s rights advocates would be saying if there were anyone who would listen or have the least capacity to comprehend the breadth and depth of injuries that instead tend to be casually batted aside (while accounts of groping or sexual harassment are gravely highlighted on NPR).

Most of these men have not been accused of rape, which doesn’t mean they couldn’t also have been accused of rape had their accusers been gutsy enough or that it wasn’t implied (point 1). And it doesn’t mean they have nothing to complain about (point 2).

Injustice is always something to complain about (point 3).

Copyright © 2019 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*I think I even read that on a liberal yard sign.

Feminist Writer Emily Lindin Explains How “Innocent Men Losing Their Jobs over False Sexual Assault/Harassment Allegations” Isn’t a Matter for Concern

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Feminists manage to reap the best of both worlds. They enjoy the insulated life of the nursery but are patted on the heads and told what big girls they are. They purport to understand life’s grim realities better than anyone and arrogate to themselves the right to nominate which of them most urgently deserves attention. And they are parentally indulged.

Consequent fact: You can’t persuade feminists of anything they don’t want to believe. On the upside, though, you don’t have to prove to other grownups that feminists’ positions are vicious. You only have to quote them.

This sequence of “tweets” was brought to my attention by Dorothy Cummings McLean in an article that I chanced upon while dealing with the aftermath of 12 years of false allegations (including of sexual harassment), the effects of which are only comprehensible to adults who have also experienced them.

Emily Lindin, the author of the tweets, writes for Teen Vogue, a magazine whose title verbalizes the essence of contemporary feminism, a movement sustained by social media, where playground popularity determines value.

Here are Ms. Lindin’s Teen Vogue writing credits with some emphases added:

  • “Rob Kardashian Slut-Shamed Blac Chyna — and the Internet’s Response Is Part of the Problem”
  • “What You Need to Know Before Sending a Nude Photo”
  • “How to Get Your Parents to Stop Slut Shaming You”
  • “Slut-Shaming Actually Makes Life Worse for Straight Guys, Too”
  • “6 Ways You May Be Slut Shaming Without Realizing It”
  • “Why Sexist Dress Codes Suck for Everyone”
  • “How to Say ‘No’ in the Middle of a Hookup Without Feeling Awkward About It”
  • “How I Learned the Definition of ‘Slut’”
  • “Why You Should Stop ‘Playing Hard to Get’ and Start Masturbating”
  • “If You’ve Ever Ordered Pizza, Then You Already Understand What Consent Is”

Ms. Lindin writes in the magazine’s “Wellness” section—or did: Her last byline is dated July 5.

Assigned the same job, I would probably have encouraged today’s youth to read more (books, I guess I have to add). Being slutty is bound to be more fun, or at least less challenging, but there are some rewards to cultivating the mind. I’ll try to demonstrate some.

Ms. Lindin “identifies” as a member of an oppressed class. Oppressed is a word that means held down or held back by abuse of power or authority…such as men and women are who are falsely accused and arbitrarily vilified by the state.

Being able to discern contradictions in what people argue—and being outraged by them—is a hallmark of intelligence, and an instruction to a young woman that a feminist might have given when I was a child is this: “Intelligence is sexy.” (Such a feminist might even have counseled: “Self-reliance is sexy.”)

There’s probably a fossil exhibit about feminists like this in the Museum of Natural History.

Ms. Lindin, who was evidently never steered toward a library, insists that “false allegations very rarely happen.” Actually, false allegations never “happen”; false allegations are made, typically (but not always) by lying women. How often is unquantifiable but certainly a lot more frequently than “very rarely,” a judgment Ms. Lindin probably copped secondhand from another feminist source. On Twitter, maybe.

Consider the wording here: “The benefit of all of us getting to finally tell the truth + the impact on victims FAR outweigh the loss of any one man’s reputation.” A trained mind might pause and wonder: Who are “all of us”? And: A man whose reputation is ruined by lies isn’t a victim? And: What do you mean “one man”?

The face of “patriarchy”

Feminism purports to advocate for equality, which would make “us” inclusive of “innocent men losing their jobs over false…allegations.” The feminist “us” clearly means girls only, and the exigency of their “truth” makes all other truths insignificant. It makes all other people (one or 100 million) insignificant. A trained mind might observe that in a democracy, where “all…are created equal,” value judgments about who should be thrown under the bus have no place. No citizen is more important than any other, nor any class of citizens more important than any other.

Self-contradictory rhetoric like Ms. Lindin’s works, because it is supported by power and has been for a long time. It has determined, and it continues to determine, what lawmakers’ priorities should be, how statutes are shaped and sharpened, and how they’re applied by our courts, the Constitution be damned. So who are the oppressors really? The “patriarchy” that Ms. Lindin would have her “followers” believe is being undone went out with the fedora. The members of today’s “patriarchy” wear bras—or maybe they don’t, for which omission they absolutely should not be slut-shamed.

The hit to “some innocent men’s reputations” by lying women is a price Ms. Lindin says she, for one, is “willing to pay.”

At a cost to her and her family (and Tweetmates) of exactly nada.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

What Can Be Done with Public Records, Like Restraining Orders, Arrests, and Convictions: A Tutorial for Judges and Everyone Who’s Been Lied about to One

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Court records are available for public consumption, freely or for a few dollars, besides people’s home addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates and ages, work histories, list of associates and family members, etc. Men and women falsely targeted for blame in drive-thru court procedures may be fined or jailed for airing information about their accusers’ conduct that’s far less sensitive than what anyone with an Internet connection and a credit card can glean in five minutes—which may include decisions against men and women falsely targeted for blame in drive-thru court procedures….

sniffing

Decisions of the court in public proceedings are public records.

Remarkably, not even judges grasp the significance of the word public. More astonishing than that many judges today don’t know the first thing about the Internet is that no one in government seems to think it’s important that they be instructed.

The conditioned imperative is blame…and the consequences be damned.

Billions of federal tax dollars have been dedicated over the past 20 years to biasing police and judicial responses to accusations of abuse, but not one has been earmarked to show judges how the Internet works and how the public records they generate may be used.

This post will attempt to amend the lapse.

Here are a mere handful of websites that peddle so-called “private” information:

What follows is a demonstration of how they work.

In the most recent fiction-based prosecution against the author of this post, it was ruled by a superior court judge that I violated the privacy of my accuser by discussing her motives online, and I was unlawfully prohibited from publicly referencing her in future. My judge was Carmine Cornelio, and here is what is returned (at no charge) if I enter his first and last names into SwitchBoard.com:

  1. his middle initial,
  2. his approximate age,
  3. his phone number (a landline provided by Coxcom),
  4. his home address (and a map showing where his home is located),
  5. a tab that provides directions to his house,
  6. a tab that leads to information about his neighbors,
  7. the names of a couple of “people [he] may know,” and
  8. an invitation to “View [his] Background & Public Record Information.”

If I enter his name into Intelius.com (again for free), his age is confirmed to be 64, and I’m provided with the names of five of his relatives, as well as his address history, aliases, and prior jobs he’s held (he’s identified as an attorney but not a judge). All of this is right there on the surface. If I cared to know more, here’s what else I could learn for a trivial fee:

Matthew Chan of Defiantly.net has recently chronicled the case of a New Jersey man, Bruce Aristeo, who was jailed for six months for “vlogging” about a woman who accused him of abuse after he was issued something called an “indefinite temporary restraining order.” The judge didn’t even view the contents of the YouTube videos his ruling was based on. I’ve viewed some of their contents, which are mostly satire and fully protected under the First Amendment, and they’re a lot less invasive that an Intelius report. Mr. Aristeo has been arrested at least four times based on allegations he says are false, and those arrests are all public records that may be pulled from an Intelius report, by an employer, for instance, or a prospective girlfriend.

Below is a screenshot from a website called BustedMugshots.com (a product of U.S. Data Co. Ltd.).

blurred mugshot

 

I was told by this man’s sister that accusations against him were falsified:

It makes me wonder, how common is this? Because my own brother had his girlfriend and mother of his child accuse him of rape a few years ago. He went to prison for it even though she later recanted her lie, but the case was already in the court’s hands and they wouldn’t accept her testimony. She truly ruined his life.

This certainly isn’t something a viewer of this record (e.g., an employer, a neighbor, or a girlfriend) would conclude. Significantly, also, this record is 15 years old. Court records, besides being very public, are very permanent.

Twice on the same page featuring the above record appears this search bar:

It encourages the viewer to look up the public records of yet other people. A button under the mugshot offers the viewer the option to “Order Complete Background Report” from the same “National Database” (called “Instant Checkmate”). The viewer is also invited to enroll in a service that notifies him or her of future arrests of the same person (“Monitor For Future Crimes”).

People, possibly on arrantly false grounds, are set up as targets for constant and endless scrutiny…to which they can hardly be insensitive.

While a line of text under the mugshot suggests a person can “Request This Record to be Modified or Purged,” here’s what pops up when you click its hyperlink:

It’s a tease. The website will only remove the record if it’s been ordered sealed or vacated by the court, or if the person it identifies has died. The blurb hastily clarifies that BustedMugshots.com isn’t out to blackmail people. It doesn’t have to: It collects fees from its advertisers.

This titillating “warning” greets the visitor to InstantCheckmate.com.

Besides advertising the services of Instant Checkmate, BustedMugshots.com advertises for InternetReputation.com, with which the notice above tacitly urges someone with a mugshot published online to inquire (“Protect Your Online Privacy”).

Observe the squeeze: Damning information is published (legally) for the person it concerns to see. That person also sees that anyone can access this and other sensitive information, and is urged to exploit the services of a company that offers to protect his or her reputation…for a fee.

(Summary in media res: A person may be falsely accused in a farcical “trial” and emotionally and financially devastated. S/he may be arrested and imprisoned based on lies. The records may be used to further maim him or her in additional prosecutions. And—and—the records of all of these proceedings, based on a fraud or frauds, may be aired publicly. But the accused may not discuss them defensively without risk of court censure. No wonder, then, that some victims of procedural abuse never want to leave the house and flinch when the doorbell rings.)

This blog concerns restraining orders, which can be obtained easily on hyped or fraudulent grounds and make defendants vulnerable to arrest and conviction for “crimes” that only they can commit, for example, sending an email or placing a phone call.

Vigilant response to any claimed violation of an order has been vigorously conditioned for decades (by the Office on Violence Against Women), and it’s not uncommon for people to report that they’ve been arrested multiple times for falsified violations of restraining orders with falsified bases (see above).

On top of all of this, the records generated by this mischief can be legally published or sold, and the government, besides, has its own public databases that may be freely accessed by anyone with an Internet connection.

These are among the reasons why principle must be restored to process.

Copyright © 2016 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*BustedMugshots.com includes this contemptible sentence in its disclaimer: “The data may not reflect the status of current charges or convictions and all individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.” Sure they are.

Granting Anonymity to “Men Wrongly Accused of Rape” Is Not about Anything but Protecting the Innocent: Talking Back to Joan Smith, Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Panel

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“There is a scandal around rape in this country. But it isn’t about a handful of men who have been wrongly accused, no matter how justifiably angry they are. Compared to the number of cases that never see the light of day, their experience is, I’m afraid, a drop in the ocean. It is about the many thousands of victims who don’t get justice at all—and the main effect of giving anonymity to accused men would be to make that situation even worse.”

—Joan Smith, The Guardian (Jan. 7, 2015)

It shouldn’t require observation that the headline of Joan Smith’s op-ed, “Men wrongly accused of rape mustn’t be granted anonymity,” makes no sense.

Probably the headline meant to read, minus the word wrongly: “Men accused of rape musn’t be granted anonymity.” Disturbing, though, is that no one notices a difference between the two versions, so conditioned has the equation of accusation with guilt (and allegations with facts) become. “Wrongly accused”/“accused”—the distinction doesn’t seem to matter. The implication of that irrelevance is that they’re all guilty really.

In a democratic society, if anyone is a “drop in the ocean,” then everyone is.

When a reported case of rape becomes prominently publicized and then discredited, such as the “Jackie case” printed in Rolling Stone a few months ago, its female subject is not regarded as a “drop in the ocean,” and many feminist writers have exhorted their readers to “remember Jackie” whatever the truth of the circumstances might have been.

Why are purported victims of rape due compassionate recognition but actual victims of false allegations to be written off? Is it too superficial to answer, Because the latter are men? Maybe…and maybe not.

In a commentary in Time Magazine last month, Cathy Young makes a case for “A Better Feminism in 2015.” Toward that worthy goal, feminist advocates must start exercising their faculty for sympathy less selectively.

The perception of pervasive, one-sided male power and advantage can create a disturbing blindness to injustices toward men—even potentially life-ruining ones such as false accusations of rape. A true equality movement should address all gender-based wrongs, not create new ones.

The crux of Ms. Smith’s position is this: “The truth is that our criminal justice system is failing to protect victims. And the reasons for that failure present a very powerful case against anonymity for those accused.”

Her position, blame and the innocent be damned, in turn makes a very powerful case for apathy to the “truth…that our criminal justice system is failing to protect victims [of sexual violence].” False allegations impact the lives of far more than “a handful of men who have been wrongly accused [of rape],” and the deficient empathy exemplified by supposing false allegations even of rape do no more than cause some to be “justifiably angry” is why a lot more than some are “justifiably angry.” False allegations don’t merely rankle; they maim.

The tone set by writers like Ms. Smith informs the direction of social science research and legislation, and prejudices authorities and judges (especially toward lesser allegations with overtones of violence like stalking and domestic abuse, whose defendants—male and female—are most vulnerable to vigilantism from the justice system). It, besides, prejudices the broader public.

The vehement imperative to expose exemplified by Ms. Smith’s commentary translates to federal cases’ being made of mere allegations of harassment—literally. In the U.S., restraining order defendants, who may only be accused of “harassment” or purportedly causing someone to “fear” (in civil not criminal hearings), are registered with the FBI, as well as entered into statewide police databases, to their lasting detriment.

While it may be the duty of the state to respond to complaints of abuse, it is not the duty of the state to invite complaints, let alone to urge them, by exposing the merely accused to scorn and revilement. In a society of equals, no one is a “drop in the ocean.”

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

The Politics of Feminism and Women’s Law: A Response to Zerlina Maxwell’s Editorial “No Matter What Jackie Said, We Should Generally Believe Rape Claims”

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Implicit in the headline of this op-ed is that even “wrongly accused” men are “perps.”

The only complimentary thing this writer can find to say about attorney Zerlina Maxwell’s December 6 column in The Washington Post is—yeah, scratch that; it has no redeeming qualities.

The editorial is not only intellectually callow but morally vacuous. Even its research and computations are careless.

Ms. Maxwell’s piece concerns a story published last month in Rolling Stone Magazine about a purported gang rape at the University of Virginia. The story was swiftly lofted upon a current of hot air then failed to maintain elevation because of a number of holes.

By Ms. Maxwell’s pained logic, the story’s having nosedived is all the more reason why allegations of rape should be accepted wholesale.

Many people (not least U-Va. administrators) will be tempted to see this as a reminder that officials, reporters and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases. This is what we mean in America when we say someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.

In important ways, this is wrong. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says.

Default means negligence, which Ms. Maxwell equates with propriety. According to feminist algebra, negligence = propriety is a balanced equation.

Note that Ms. Maxwell isn’t actually making an argument for policy reform. We already do, by default, believe what an accuser says, hence outraged and anguished accounts like the ones you’ll find here: “Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence.”

Ms. Maxwell fails to appreciate that our crediting what a rape accuser says “as a matter of default” means the slope is greased all the way to the bottom. Accepting allegations of rape on faith means accepting on faith all allegations that relate to or imply violence.

And the grease flows sideways, also, not just top-down.

According to the same policy, women  too, are victimized by false allegations, false allegations made in criminal, civil, and family court (as well as to government agencies like Child Protective Services)—and the standard applied in non-criminal procedures is already much reduced from “innocent until proven guilty.” Women unjustly lose their good names, their livelihoods, their children, and their homes (and that’s just the abbreviated list). These are among the consequences of equating allegations with facts “as a matter of default.”

false-rape-letterMs. Maxwell concludes: “Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.”

She asserts that rape leaves a “lasting psychological wound” but that the fallout from being falsely accused of rape is minor and ephemeral. “The accused would have a rough period,” she allows. “He might be suspended from his job; friends might defriend him on Facebook.”

Haunting is not only that people like Ms. Maxwell can appeal to pathos to make their case or that they can make such an appeal despite demonstrating no faculty for empathy; haunting is that their appeals nevertheless succeed.

Ms. Maxwell says the “cost of disbelieving women…signals that women don’t matter and that they are disposable.” No, it signals that no one is any more disposable than anyone else.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Stepford Syndrome: Why Feminist Rape Rhetoric Is Both Tiresome and Disturbing (and How It Hurts Not Only Men, but Women, Too)

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“A U.S. law professor, who will be speaking at the Commons, said the UK’s stance on false allegations [of rape] is more aggressive than in countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia. Prof. Lisa Avalos, of the University of Arkansas, said false allegations in the U.S. were dealt with as a misdemeanour offence, not a felony—and most women were not jailed if found guilty.

“‘In the course of my research, I have not found any country that pursues these cases against women rape complainants in the way the UK does. The UK has an unusual approach, and I think their approach violates human rights,’ she said.”

—The Guardian (December 1, 2014)

This quotation about rape “complainants” is drawn from a story that appeared in The Guardian this week (“109 women prosecuted for false rape claims in five years, say campaigners”), a story that’s mirrored on a number of other sites, including Jezebel.com and Salon.com.

Picketers object to the prosecution of 109 British women in recent years for perverting the course of justice by falsely alleging rape. According to the protesters’ signs, all female accusers are “victims” and “rape survivors,” and the men they accuse are all “rapists” (ipso facto).

The story concerns outrage expressed by activist representatives of the charity Women Against Rape, or WAR, whose assertions require no elucidation; they’re clockwork.

Whether WAR’s outrage has merit is difficult to discern.

Obviously lost in the uproar, however, is what the (female) American law professor who’s quoted in the epigraph actually says, which is this: Falsely accusing someone of rape in the United States is merely a misdemeanor offense and one for which an accuser is rarely punished and may never be prosecuted at all.

This fact isn’t perceived as unfair by feminist activists—far from it. It’s touted, rather, as a reason why it’s a “human rights violation” for the United Kingdom to mete out sterner justice.

This writer, for one, would be more sympathetic to the denouncements of WAR if there were any headline-grabbing activist groups tabulating how many men are arrested and/or prosecuted each year for being falsely accused of rape.

In the fictional community of Stepford, all the women have been replaced by robots whose responses are programmed.

Even allowing that the 2 to 8% false allegation rate commonly cited by feminists were true (and it isn’t), the number of men falsely accused of rape is many times greater than the number of women prosecuted for false allegations, in the UK and everywhere else (for analysis of the rate of false allegations of rape, see Cathy Young’s 2014 Slate.com article, “Crying Rape: False rape accusations exist, and they are a serious problem,” and Emily Bazelon and Rachel Larimore’s 2009 piece, “How Often Do Women Falsely Cry Rape?” published in the same outlet).

Feminist outcry is reflexive, even arguably robotic, and invariably insensitive to male victimization. The argument that a majority of rapes goes unpunished in no way (logically, morally, or otherwise) excuses the unjust implication or punishment of even a single person, ever.

Besides being insensitive to male victimization, moreover, feminists evince no awareness that women, too, are victimized by their furor’s trickle-down effect. Feminists’ making an international case of the prosecution of 109 women works a very real influence on how rulings on charges “lesser” than rape are formed by the courts—charges made in restraining order, stalking, domestic violence, and related cases—and the defendants in these cases are far from exclusively men.

False allegations made against women in prosecutions involving or implying violence may only be a fraction of those made against men, but with those prosecutions’ numbering in the millions each year, that fraction is hardly inconsiderable and easily dwarfs a figure like 109. To posit, as activist groups like WAR tacitly do, that accusers’ allegations should be credited on faith means a lot of women (globally) will continue to be falsely implicated or punished based on judicial impulses that have been conditioned by feminist rhetoric. Much of the “social science” that’s used to “train” judges how to rule in prosecutions predicated on allegations of violence or the fear of violence is inspired by groups like WAR.

To illustrate how feminists’ gears turn (and why those gears need retooling), contemplate this letter printed in The Guardian recently that was composed by a 21-year-old man who was accused of rape as a boy: “A letter to…the girl who accused me of rape when I was 15.”

Now consider this steely response to it by Lucia Osborne-Crowley published almost simultaneously (buzz…whir…click) on WomensAgenda.com: “Why did the Guardian publish this letter about false rape accusations?”

Need any more really be said?

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

J’s Story: Restraining Order Abuse and the “Dreaded Crazy”

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J, a single dad who lives in Texas with his two kids, submitted his story as a comment to the blog in September, prefacing it: “I am writing this to share [it] with the rest of my fellow male victims [who] fall in with the dreaded Crazy.”

The “dreaded Crazy” in J’s case manifested as an Arkansas woman J began a romance with online, a high-conflict person whom a clinician might diagnose with borderline personality disorder (BPD).

(For an elucidation of BPD, see psychologist Tara Palmatier’s “In His Own Words: Dangerous Crazy Bitch Ahead,” which chronicles a case similar to J’s. See also any of Dr. Palmatier’s detailed explications of personality disorders.)

Here’s J’s story in his own words (lightly edited):

I met a beautiful, sexy, well-educated woman online. We met in person, and I was smitten. We shared our life stories with each other and began to see each other more. Although she lived over 500 miles away with her two children, I visited her every chance I could.

Her past was fraught will evil men who had taken advantage of her. She told me she was a young widow and that her first husband died suddenly of heart failure at a very early age, leaving her and her first child all alone. She said she remarried shortly after and had her second child. Unfortunately the second husband turned out to be a quite the carouser and left suddenly for Europe to be with another woman.

I felt so bad for her. I had two children of my own as a single father, so I was able to connect with how hard it was. She told me how she loved children and had always wanted a big family. She lamented feeling that her own family had deserted her, shunning her because she wasn’t a devout Christian.

There were so many twists and turns to her story. How could all this happen to such a wonderful and beautiful woman? She was such a nice and giving person….

Because it was all complete bullsh*t.

I won’t go into the details of my awakening. Let’s just say dates didn’t match up. Her kids’ (Fruit Loops’) stories didn’t match up. As a matter of fact, just about everything she told me didn’t match up. But I was smitten. So this went on for a long time until one day I just flatly called her on it. Suddenly my little scoop of heaven turned into a raging, clawing, screaming harpy. She accused me of being like every other son of a bitch in her life. Then she was swinging at me and screaming at me to get out.

I was already sprinting backwards, car keys in hand, toward my car. I got inside and sped off as she was chasing me. I was outta there, heading back to Texas never to return.

I did not see, speak, or talk to that woman again for over six months. Then one day a constable walks into my office and says, “Are you so-and-so?” I said yes. “Well, I have a restraining order for you from Arkansas.” Confused, I took it and read it. The constable then said as he was leaving, “I normally don’t read those. But looks like one crazy bitch to me. Better stay away. Ha-ha. Have a nice day.”

I was blown away.

The order claimed that I had snuck inside her house the weekend prior and forced her to call some other guy to tell this other guy (whom I don’t know, never met or heard of) that she was madly in love with me. Then her statement said I “roughed [her] up” then vanished into the night. Damn I was stunned. I did not know what to do. The order stated that I had 14 days to show up in Arkansas! I wasn’t even there. I lived in another state! I had not seen or heard from this woman in six months!

So I called an attorney friend of mine. He jokingly asked, “Did you do it”? I replied, “Hell no!” He then asked me to fax over the order. After he reviewed it, he called back and said, “Yep, it’s a restraining order, and you have 14 days. In the meantime, you have to stay away from her and her children.”

I replied, “This is bullsh*t! What if I just ignore it?” He said, “Well, if you ignore it and don’t show up in court on that day, you will automatically be found guilty. The charge will stay on your record, and you may not be able to buy a firearm.” “What the f—!” I yelled. “Can’t you just send a letter to the court explaining I wasn’t there and live 500 miles away?” He said no. “If you want to fight the charge, you have to show up.” He said he would have gone for me but wasn’t licensed in Arkansas.

He gave me the number of an attorney friend who worked in Little Rock. Next thing I knew, I’m having to fax or email every record I kept that shows my whereabouts on that day: gas receipts, store receipts, etc. I had to get a list of movies that I watched from the video download company we use. Cell phone calls. Text messages. (By the way, they really do monitor those. They can pinpoint your exact location, but you have to send a written request.) All of this to prove I was not there. Once I gave that attorney everything, he told me he would go to court that day and ask for an extension of 60 days. And I would still have to show up in Arkansas. Sh*t!

I cannot express the worry I endured during this time. Here I was falsely accused of something I did not do and was guilty until I proved otherwise in another state!

Prior to my court date, the attorney hired a private detective to run police reports on this woman’s current and former addresses. All you really have to do is call the local police department, and for a small copy fee it will give you all of the police reports related to a specific address for a specified time period. It’s really quite easy to do.

I was shocked when I saw them.

This woman, over a period of five years, had called the police over 20 times between two different addresses claiming either an assault or attempted break-in. All the police reports were noted as unfounded. One was a claim of rape. On that claim, she took some poor guy all the way to a grand jury, which promptly dismissed it. (Grand jury decisions are sealed, but the defendant’s name and attorney were listed. My attorney called that guy’s attorney and got a few details.)

The file on her sordid past was pretty thick. I thought that this was going to be over. Nope! I couldn’t use this information in court. It didn’t pertain to this incident. It was still her word against mine.

The day of the court hearing came. I drove out of state to be there. She actually showed in up in court that day. I suspect she didn’t expect I would show. The judge called out our docket. She sat on one side of the courtroom. My attorney and I sat on the other.

Seconds before the hearing, my attorney asked to briefly speak just to the prosecutor. They met in front of the bench, and my attorney handed him the file with prior police reports and my receipts and information as to my whereabouts on the day in question. The prosecutor then asked the judge if he could take a few minutes with the plaintiff. The prosecutor walked over to her with the file and whispered in her ear as he let her review the contents of the file. You could see the blood drain from her face. She whispered something to him. The prosecutor then stood up and said, “Your Honor, the plaintiff requests to withdraw her charge.” The judge just laughed and said, “Case dismissed.” That was it. It was over, no questions asked: $3,800 bucks and a long drive back home.

I did return to the local sheriff’s office and file an amended police report to state I was falsely accused and the case was dismissed on this date. You can have the dismissal form put in the police record.

I also had a cease-and-desist letter drafted by my attorney stating basically, “Don’t ever do this again, or I will sue you for liability.” You can put that in the police record, as well.

I had a copy of that letter sent to her by certified mail. I also had a copy personally delivered to her place of work by the same investigator who ran the background check. He went to her office and told the receptionist that he had a “special delivery” letter for her and that he needed to deliver it in person.

The receptionist called her to the front office. When she did, the investigator introduced himself and informed her that he had a letter to present. He pulled the letter out and proceeded to read the cease-and-desist letter out loud to her in the crowded waiting room. Then he handed it to her and left. He reported back that she appeared to have been in shock.

That’s it. Haven’t heard from her to date.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Interminable Indeterminacy: How False Allegations on Restraining Orders May Be Worse than False Allegations of Rape

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Journalists who recognize the harm of facile or false allegations invariably focus on rape. This ignores the harm done to women by false allegations, of course, and shows ignorance, besides, of a significantly more fertile yet equally damaging source of wrongful prosecutions: the civil restraining order.

Unarguably there are few miscarriages of justice worse than when rape is falsely alleged and the victim of the false accusation is nevertheless found guilty. That’s a life brutally scarred or ruined for absolutely nothing—and ruined not by a lone malefactor but by the state itself.

Most negative commentary on rape allegations, though, focuses on cases where the evidence is less than conclusive or is found to be utterly false.

Just as there’s no quantifying the effects of being raped, there’s no quantifying the effects of being falsely accused of rape. The stigma is devastating, and public sympathy is nevertheless scant. Even online support groups for victims of false allegations of rape may be accessible to screened subscribers only, so distrustful and averse to scrutiny are the men who are maligned this way.

If, however, an allegation of rape is officially determined baseless, its victim has at least the solace of being able to say so. This hardly dispels the psychic effects, but it does mitigate external ramifications, like access to jobs.

False restraining orders, in contrast, often aren’t discerned as false (and restraining orders may be awarded in spite of false allegations’ being detected), and the consequences their recipients must live with are more than psychological. The damning records are preserved indefinitely. In some regions (like Massachusetts), to merely be accused of domestic violence in an ex parte civil court procedure is to be recorded in a state registry as a violent offender. Even if claims are later dismissed when the accused is given an opportunity to defend him- or herself, that is, even if a judge later recognizes on record that s/he’s “innocent,” s/he’s still “guilty” according to the system, and “guilty” is all a background check will reflect.

The implications of restraining orders, what’s more, are generic. There’s no specific charge associated with them. They’re catchalls that categorically imply everything sordid, violent, and creepy. They most urgently suggest stalking, violence, and sexual deviance.

Rape, it should be noted, may be among the actual allegations made by a restraining order applicant—and unlike in a criminal trial, a judgment grounded on such an allegation, amid others, may be affirmed in spite of the allegation’s merits’ never having been assessed.

Restraining orders don’t determine anything. The procedures from which they issue are too accelerated and loosey-goosey to be conclusive.

That no punishment attends the issuance of a restraining order is a tacit acknowledgment by the state that it may be based on nothing more substantive than hearsay and innuendo, and that its implications should be discounted.

They aren’t discounted, though. They’re regarded just as gravely in some respects as felony sentences. Restraining order recipients are denied jobs, leases, and loans. Some are prohibited from working with or around children—and even from attending their own children’s school events (sometimes based on accusations they’re never granted the practicable opportunity to contest in court—and always based on accusations they’re at most given a few minutes to controvert, typically without benefit of legal counsel).

Restraining order rulings are inevitably sketchy at best. They’re indeterminate but nevertheless treated as decisive—and they never go away.

“On the force of the plaintiff’s testimony, the court concludes it’s a crocodile.”

Victims of false rape allegations are socially disgraced and alienated, and psychologically tormented. Victims of false restraining orders may be, too, and besides may lose everything of value to them or have it taken from them by the state. People report spending as much as $100,000 or more to defend themselves in protracted litigations whose seed was an accuser’s filling out some paperwork and having a few-minute chinwag with a judge. They report losing their homes, becoming estranged from their children, and being permanently barred from employment in their fields of qualification and expertise.

Negative associations that attend a charge of rape are unquestionably more sensational and severe than those that accompany the issuance of a restraining order, but on balance the lived consequences of a restraining order may be comparable if not worse.

False allegations of rape should emphatically be called out by reporters to check the impulse that prevails today to credit finger-pointing as fact (particularly finger-pointing by women). Because the implications of rape are so loud and urgent, revelations of false allegations are loud and urgent, too. They arouse consciousness and conscience.

The question that they should stimulate and have yet to, however, is that if people will lie about rape, what won’t they lie about and what quieter and subtler lies and their consequences are being overlooked?

Exposure in the press would indicate that newsworthy instances of dubious or false allegations of rape are few. The problem with giving exclusive attention to them is that it hides more than it reveals.

The cancer of false allegations is far more advanced and widespread.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

When Girls’ Being Girls Isn’t Cute: False Allegations of Violence and Rape

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I was just contemplating what I’ve come to think of as “estrogen rage”—a peculiarly feminine mode of violence that orbits around false allegations to authority figures. Furious men do violence, which is why domestic violence and restraining order laws exist. Furious women delegate violence (by lying), which is why the abuse of domestic violence and restraining order laws is rampant.

I was distracted from this rumination by two accounts that emerged in the press recently of women accusing men of rape to conceal affairs:

“Ex-Counselor Gets up to 18 Months in Prison for False Reports of Abduction, Assault” (Bellefonte, Pennsylvania)

“Sheriff: Woman Files False Rape Report to Cover up Affair” (Athens, Alabama)

Their motive wasn’t rage; it was selfishness. That same theme is present, however: using others (cops and judges) as tools of violence.

When stories like this are bruited, it’s always to show that, hey, women lie about rape: See! That’s not what people should find disturbing about these stories, though.

whateverWhat people should find disturbing about these stories is how feminine false accusers think about lying, including lying about physical and sexual violence (or their threat). They think it’s no big deal—or they don’t think about it at all.

If false accusers regard lying about rape as no biggie, then what does that say not only about how they regard other types of false allegations but about how they regard rape itself? Right, they regard rape as no biggie.

This is what no one ever confronts head-on.

Even feminists who regard false allegations of physical and sexual violence as insignificant must regard acts of physical and sexual violence as insignificant. You can’t say the acts are ghastly and in the same breath say being falsely accused of them isn’t.

Either both are consequential, or neither is.

Feminists are more prone to denounce even the falsely accused (that is, to blame the victims) than they are to denounce false accusers (their “sisters”). Feminists’ denunciations, then, aren’t ultimately of (sexual) violence; their denunciations are of men. Here we come back to the topic of estrogen.

Feminine and feminist psychology are due more scrutiny than they receive. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read even sympathetic reporters of false allegations say they recognize that the more urgent problem is (sexual) violence against women—a sentiment that, intentionally or not, motivates false allegations. False accusers aren’t just aided and abetted by this pronouncement of priority; they’re encouraged by it.

Trivializing false allegations can hardly be said to deter women from making them. The message it conveys, rather, is that false accusers can and should expect sympathy and attention (because all women who make allegations can and should expect sympathy and attention).

The idea that men do evil in response to their hormonal urges is broadly promulgated, and the influence of that idea is to be seen plainly in our laws and in how our courts administer those laws.

Women have hormonal urges, too, and they’re not just toward maternity.

Consider that the women in the stories highlighted in this post falsely accused men of rape whom they’d just been rolling beneath the sheets with…and put a name to that act.

Both women’s lies, incidentally, were undone by text messages they’d exchanged with their lovers that showed the sex was consensual.

Girls will be girls.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

The Relationship between False Allegations of Rape and Restraining Order Abuse

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It’s not without regret for how they may affect victims of sexual violence that a number of journalistic reports that expose false rape allegations have been highlighted on this blog. Although the blog’s focus is restraining order abuse, the potency of restraining orders and the laxity applied to the allegations they’re based on derive from the specter of domestic and sexual violence, the shadow of which has infected and jaundiced the perceptions of our legislators and judges.

The volume of false rape allegations that have been brought to public attention this year—mostly in the U.K., which is less squeamish about acknowledging fraud of this sort—will probably make further mention excessive, because it threatens to distract from reports and explications more directly relevant to the blog’s primary concern, which is restraining order injustice (a redundant phrase). Several news stories were noted this month, and some of these stories are each but one of a series that trace the same saga of mischief.

“Law Graduate Falsely Accused Boyfriend of Rape and Assault as Excuse, Jury Told” (Steven Morris, The Guardian, 2014)

“Oxford Union ‘Rape Victim Knew Her Claim Was False’” (Oliver Duggan, Amelia Hamer, and James Rothwell, The Telegraph, 2014)

“Woman Accused of Making Repeated False Rape Allegations” (The Inquisitr, 2014)

“Woman Sentenced after Falsely Accusing Two Men of Rape” (UPI, 2014) (see also commentary by attorney and former Houston Law Review editor Robert Franklin)

“Woman Who Cut Herself with Razor and Claimed She’d Been Raped Is Jailed” (Michael Donnelly, Belfast Telegraph, 2014)

“Victim of False Rape Accusation Seeks Compensation” (The Northern Echo, 2014)

“Man Wrongly Accused of Sexual Assault Sues Police” (Rachel Olding, Sydney Morning Herald, 2014)

The purpose of collecting these reports of false rape allegations hasn’t been to discount the claims of real victims or even to reveal that false allegations are made, which should be unsurprising in a sociopolitical climate that’s eager to credit allegations of violence against women; the purpose, rather, is to reveal the motives of false accusers and to emphasize that there’s no lie that a dedicated false accuser will balk at telling and holding fast to. It happens that when false accusers frame people for a crime society holds in the highest contempt, their motives become more noteworthy.

If accusers are willing to falsely allege even rape (and casually), there’s no estimating how many “lesser” false accusations are made routinely, particularly when no risk or serious investment is entailed. Civil restraining orders are had in hours if not minutes based on brief interviews with judges, and there are no repercussions to their plaintiffs if the allegations they’re based on are untrue. They can furthermore instantly gratify multiple motives for false allegations at the same time.

These motives are sorted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under five broad rubrics: mental illness (or aberrance), attention-seeking/sympathy, profit, alibi (blame-shifting or cover-up), and revenge (or spite).

A false restraining order litigant with a malicious yen may leave a courthouse shortly after entering it having gained sole entitlement to a residence, attendant properties, and children, possibly while displacing blame from him- or herself for misconduct, and having enjoyed the reward of an authority figure’s undivided attention won at the expense of his or her victim.

S/he may, besides, be crackerjacks.

The exposure of false allegations of rape shouldn’t be interpreted as denying the reality or brutality of sexual violence. What it should do, however, is serve as a rude awakening to those who believe (and promote the belief) that allegations of abuse should be accepted without suspicion. It should also stress that false allegations aren’t negligible, rare, or harmless.

They’re anything but.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

False Allegations of Rape: A Digression into Taboo Territory from Talking back to the Usual Sorts of False Allegations Made on Restraining Orders

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=The prevalence of false allegations of rape is contested. What isn’t contested by anyone is that false allegations of rape are made, and what shouldn’t be contested by anyone is that false allegations of rape (and any number of other offenses) are heinous lies that may end life as they knew it for the falsely accused.

The specter invoked by “rape culture” is what informs public perceptions of allegations of fear and violence made on restraining orders, and has prompted the operant conditioning to which authorities and judges have been subjected for decades and which translates to an accused’s being presumed guilty on little or no more basis than that an accusation was made. So influential has rhetoric like this been that most or all allegations made on restraining orders are perceived as valid, urgent, and sinister, whether they’re made against men or women. Police officers and judges have been conditioned to react reflexively instead of critically in these cases, and they’ve been authorized, moreover, to view and treat the accused with contempt.

Acknowledging that false allegations are made doesn’t discount the reality and trauma of rape, nor does it excuse the act; it isn’t a concession to the “enemy.” Not acknowledging that false allegations are made, however, does make light of human torment and is inexcusable. Also, it’s false accusers, more than anyone, who discredit and mock the trauma of real victims; and for this reason, they should be the targets of feminist ire, instead of those who advocate for the victims of false accusers.

Statistics reported by Cathy Young, whose journalistic integrity is unimpeachable, conservatively put false allegations of rape at 9% (as computed by the FBI). It’s often posited that many more rapes occur than are reported, which is no doubt true. So the percentage of false allegations relative to the number of actual rapes may be less than 9%. This, though, is a misleading observation that mixes apples and oranges. Unreported rapes have nothing to do with the fact that a conservatively estimated 9% of alleged rapes are falsely alleged rapes.

A consideration that isn’t statistically irrelevant, furthermore, is that some false allegations of rape aren’t recognized as false.

To a feminist, even a 9% false-allegation rate is deemed negligible. Maybe it’s statistically negligible—and that’s a BIG maybe—but people aren’t statistics. That nine in a hundred represents nine people. In 1,000 cases, that’s 90 people. In 10,000 cases, that’s 900 people.

According to Wikipedia, “Nearly 90,000 people reported being raped in the United States in 2008.”

What’s evident in the slant of writing that discounts false allegations of rape is that the lives of the falsely accused are somehow less important than the lives of rape victims. Categorically, they are not, and concluding otherwise betrays what psychologists call “emotional reasoning.” The falsely accused have no relationship either to the victims or perpetrators of rape whatsoever.

Falsely accused = innocent.

What’s implicit in the slant of writing that discounts false allegations of rape is that the victims of those allegations are men, and men having it coming to them anyway.

This manner of thinking is wrong. Like a rape victim, someone falsely accused of rape (or anything else) is someone who is guiltless. Period. (S)he is not accountable, by any sane standard, for the actions of rapists (or other offenders). Period.

Thinking to the contrary has infected the perceptions of our administrators, legislators, judges, and police officers to the lasting detriment of every man who’s falsely accused of anything. And not just every man who’s falsely accused. The propagandist rhetoric generated by this thinking is lethal, and it has corrupted our system and our social conscience to their marrows.

Victims of false allegations are casualties—casualties—not trivia.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

The Modern-Day Witch Trial: On Using a Restraining Order to Accuse a Mother of Rape

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The last post addressed the case of a mom who’s been accused of serial rape by the father of one of her children.

Ignore whether it’s okay to allow a man’s record to be contaminated with an uncorroborated allegation of rape scrawled on a restraining order application—an allegation, incidentally, that will ruin his life (there’s not an employer on the face of the planet who’s going to respond to “She accused me of rape” with “Oh, fiddlesticks. When can you start?”).

Ignore that and consider what judge, in the “bad old days” before restraining orders existed, would have allowed a woman to be publicly labeled a rapist, merely by implication.

Now consider how far back in history we’d have to reach to find a time when such an unfounded allegation would previously have been taken seriously. I’m not a historian, but my guess would be during the period when we last had witch trials.

It was probably possible, say, as recently as the 1600s to have a woman tried as a succubus (a demon in female form who forcibly copulated with men while they slept) just based on “persuasive” testimony like “She consorts with the devil!”

Our modern-day witch trials, restraining order adjudications, which proceed from the same non-evidentiary basis, don’t threaten penalties like drowning or incineration. I wonder, though, whether their draconian punishments were the only aspects of the original witch trials that were unjust.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Restraining Orders Are Heroin: On Feminists, “Rape Culture,” and Affliction Addiction

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“I have known my ex since 2007, and our relationship was never easy. I stood with him during the affairs, the lies, whatever…. We had a child in 2009, and then the violence started…. After the last failed mediation in Nov[ember] 2012, he again wanted to get back together, [and] I was hit with a new motion to change the parenting time for our child, and he stated that I was harming or endangering our child.

“In Jan[uary] 2013, he again wanted us to work [things] out, and I again agreed…. I began to assist with bills, his house, [and] accommodating his requests with our child. Fast forward to Oct[ober] 2013…after learning once again there were other women involved and accepting his apology at dinner one night, the next day I was served with a temp[orary] restraining order. It was filled with a whole lot of false allegations and a report that he filed with the police. The report with the police came back unfounded, and shortly after that report was put into evidence, he filed an addendum to his original…restraining order in Nov[ember] 2013, adding on 38 more individual allegations dating back to 2007 from when we first met.

“In mid-Nov[ember] 2013, he then filed an additional complaint against [me] through military channels…. He has also filled more in [on] our parenting-time case against me.

“He is now stating that since 2007, he feels I have been forcing him into sex, and he may now need to seek therapy after learning how often he has been raped.

“Since the restraining order has been in effect, my ex has contacted my family, has [had] his new [girlfriend] file complaints with me at my job, has filed additional allegations with my job, and is now saying I am an unfit parent.

“I just am unsure where to turn…or what to do. If this restraining order is found to go permanently against me, I have more to lose with my career and way of providing for my children, and though he is aware of this, he is also not backing down. And now with his new allegations in court about the forced sexual encounters for years, his feelings of being afraid, and his claim that he will need to seek therapy, I am not sure how all of this will play out against me.”

 —Blog respondent

I recently acquainted myself with “rape culture,” a term used ubiquitously in feminist screeds, and observed that there’s a contrary case to be made for its being applied to the defenders of court-mediated villainies that emotionally scourge innocents and cripple their lives.

The woman whose story serves as epigraph to this discussion is one such victim. Here’s a woman, a mother, moreover, who has endured beastly treatment with the patience of Job only to be labeled a rapist, terrorist, unfit mother, etc., etc. and who now faces the prospect of having her entire existence tweezed apart.

With regard to so-called rape culture, consider that this woman’s story shows that not only may false allegations of rape be readily put over on the courts through restraining order abuse; it isn’t just men who can be falsely accused.

Maybe feminist readers of this woman’s saga of pain would only conclude that it wasn’t impressed upon her early enough that women need men like fish need bicycles. Or maybe they’d conclude that it just goes to show how awful men can be, disregarding that the woman has also been persecuted by her ex’s new girlfriend.

In fact, what it and any number of others’ ordeals show is that when you offer people an easy means to excite drama and conflict, they’ll exploit it.

There’s a reason why opiates are carefully controlled substances that aren’t freely handed out to everyone who claims to need them for pain relief. If they were, a lot of people would welcome a cheap high.

Process abusers need to be recognized for what they are: substance abusers. Restraining orders, whose injustices persist because they’re vehemently championed by ideologues, are dispensed gratuitously and used gratuitously. For too many users, what’s more, they’re gateway drugs that whet an insatiable, predatory appetite.

Drama and attention junkies are no different from any other kind. Offer them a free narcotic, and they’ll take it and jones for more.

Defenders of restraining orders, who think of them as fixes, don’t realize how right they are.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Diving into the Shallow End: What It Takes to Disprove and Recover Damages for a Restraining Order Based on Fraud

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Many restraining order recipients are brought to this site wondering how to recover damages for false allegations and the torments and losses that result from them. Not only is perjury (lying to the court) never prosecuted; it’s never explicitly acknowledged. The question arises whether false accusers ever get their just deserts.

It turns out it does happen sometimes. Or has at least once. Kinda.

A news story I came across the other day exemplifies how extreme false allegations must be, how vigorously they must be confuted, and how prominently their victim must stand out from the crowd for a judge to sit up and take notice.

The story concerned a woman’s being ordered to pay her former boyfriend over $55,000 after she “falsely accused him of raping and brutalizing her…during a child-custody dispute.” She had applied for a permanent restraining order against him alleging that he “perpetrated a horrific physical attack.” Her specific allegations to the police and court were that he “knocked her unconscious,” “dragged her in the house,” “sexually assaulted her,” and “burned her with matches and committed other violence.”

The boyfriend was arrested and held without bail for three months before a judge dismissed the charges. To regain his liberty, the man had to hire (besides an attorney, of course) a private investigator, who turned up “10 witnesses who were ready to testify that they saw [him] in other locations at the time of the alleged attack.”

According to his lawyer, he would otherwise have “faced the possibility of five life sentences in prison as a result of [his girlfriend’s] criminal complaint.” The money he was awarded was for legal and travel expenses. Although the lawyer informed the district attorney’s office that she had evidence the girlfriend had committed perjury, the woman wasn’t prosecuted. She had accused her boyfriend of breaking her shoulder during his alleged assault, but, the lawyer said, “her medical records reveal that she broke her shoulder diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool.”

The news story goes on to report that the boyfriend was pursuing a malicious prosecution lawsuit against his accuser, with whom he shares a son, alleging false imprisonment, abuse of process, and infliction of emotional distress.

While the recognition this man received for his suffering may surprise readers who’ve also been victimized by false allegations only to be subjected to further ridicule and disparagement from the court for resisting a bum rap, the fact that this rare recipient of quasi-justice is the senior vice president of a bank won’t be surprising at all.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com